I heard the distinctive plasticky rattle of cellophane against the counter, accompanied by the rustle of tissue paper. Flowers. He’d brought me a bouquet of some sort. Well, not ‘some sort’ – it would be Richard’s go-to arrangement. He always went for a dozen roses (colour dependent on occasion – red for valentine’s, pink on anniversaries, yellow on birthdays) with gypsophila and eucalyptus. A combination that I’d thought endearingly classic and vintage. Just then, however, it felt annoyingly predictable. I wondered what colour roses he’d picked for ‘sorry I shagged someone else on the sofa’. Hopefully, blue – because they were as improbable as his chances of getting back with me.
‘Where is she?’ Richard asked, actually sounding kind of sad.
‘Just out for a bit.’ I was glad Emma hadn’t said the café or somewhere he could conceivably chase me down. ‘I don’t know when she’ll be back… sorry.’
‘… is she out with him – her new bloke?’ Richard asked snippily. My sympathy evaporated. He obviously didn’t believe me about Cooper – the hypocrite! But there was also a tiny glimmer of vindictive satisfaction. Ha! Now he was getting a little taste of his own medicine – imagining me moving on with someone else. Of course, then I thought about myself and Cooper… moving on, and had to purse my lips together to contain the squeak of pure shock at my own imaginings.
‘I don’t think she has one of those.’ I could imagine Emma crossing her arms sternly, not giving anything away, and was immensely thankful that she was my friend. She’d make a pretty scary enemy.
‘She was washing his clothes the other day. Gave me some cock-and-bull story about falling in the canal and borrowing them to come home in.’ Richard was obviously not letting go of his suspicions, and whatever humility his drunken state had left him with was apparently wearing thin. ‘She moved on pretty quick.’
Un-be-lievable. The hot, flustered feeling brought on by imagining myself ‘moving on’ with Cooper (in my head we were now lying in his bed on the narrowboat, cosy and post-coital) was replaced by the urge to burst out through the curtain and slap Richard’s idiotic face. How DARE he judge me and the speed at which I may or may not be getting over him? He had cheated on me! Right in front of my eyes!
‘I mean… less quickly than you, right?’ Emma said sweetly. I punched the air in silent approval. Yes! Get him, girl! ‘Besides I’m sure Tabitha’s not looking to start washing some other man’s clothes for him. She’s probably looking for an adult.’
The chilly silence was so intense that I half expected fog to start rolling in through the bead curtain. Emma had never exactly been warm with Richard but now she was treating him like a stranger at the bus stop who’d just flashed her and then offered her a pocket-temperature Dairylea Triangle. It was amazing and awful. I wished I’d recorded it, to be honest. I felt like the time in uni when I’d drunk five Redbulls in a one-hour seminar. I was practically vibrating with energy, and also slightly nauseous.
‘Just give her the flowers… please,’ Richard muttered. God, he sounded annoyed. Good.
I heard him walk across the shop, shoes rapping on the vinyl floor. The bell jingled and then rattled aggressively as he slammed the door. There was a moment of silence.
‘He’s gone,’ Emma said redundantly. There was a rustle as she picked up the flowers and, a moment later, she came through to the back with them. White roses. Weirdly funereal, but appropriate given he’d killed our relationship completely dead. Though the residual feelings of loss, anger and shame were still churning in my stomach, like an unfortunate late-night kebab.
‘You can take those, if you like,’ I said. ‘Or bin them, I don’t really mind.’
‘Maybe your mum might like them?’ Emma asked. ‘It’d be a good excuse to pop round and talk.’
I pulled a face. ‘I don’t really feel like doing that right now. Thanks for dealing with him, though.’
‘No problem. I’ll go to the library now, shall I? Get those posters printed?’
Emma took some change from petty cash and left me to it. I stuck the flowers precariously into a mug so they wouldn’t die before I could work out what to do with them. They were innocent in all this after all. They hadn’t asked to be bought by a knob.
Sitting in the back room, looking at those flowers, I thought of the article Mum had sent me. Okay, so it was poorly timed and borderline offensive that she was only worried about my declining fertility but, at the same time, didn’t she have a point?
Starting again with someone else would take a few years. I’d have to find a good guy – and it had taken several years of dates that went nowhere before I even found Richard. The chemistry hadn’t been instantaneous but he’d been polite, attractive and not welded to a PlayStation or the sofa. I’d thought he was mature and thoughtful. Maybe I’d been looking for the wrong things. Unbidden, I thought of Cooper half-smiling at my Dolly CD. No, a future was not built on liking the same naff music. Or books.
So there was finding someone suitable, then dating, becoming official, moving in together, discussing marriage, all those little steps to take before the patter of tiny feet. I wanted to do things properly – if anything, Richard cheating had made me firmer in that belief. I imagined having had a baby with him a year or so ago. I’d be stuck right now, not even a chance of spousal support. No, marriage first, baby after. That was the plan.
But I was running out of time to make that plan work.
Are you sure?Mum had asked. Well, that was the thing, wasn’t it? I was sure, most of the time. When I was with Emma or at the shop, it felt easy to imagine a Richard-less future. But around Mum or in the flat by myself, struggling to find somewhere to live now that I was starting over, I began to have my doubts.
Richard was many things, but I’d been with him for three years, and I knew him. Right up until he’d cheated on me, I thought he was husband material. Father material. Even now, I was looking at the flowers and wondering if I was being too hasty. He was playing his part in the apology dance, so maybe I was being rash in not doing my bit. Like an adult. The word sat heavy as a toad in my gut. A boring adult, who did things because they were rational and expected and responsible. Even if that meant setting happiness aside to settle for… Richard.
But the memory of what I’d walked in on was still with me. I couldn’t forgive cheating. There were probably those out there who could but I wasn’t one of them and, if anyone I knew decided to get back with their partner in a similar situation, I didn’t know how I’d feel about them. At best I’d maybe pity them, at worst I’d be disgusted.
No, I decided. Even if it was a mistake to start over now. Even if I missed the boat on having kids and getting married, as my mum was clearly afraid I would. It wasn’t worth how I’d feel about myself if I took Richard back. That was the end of it.
Chapter 19
Ispent the nextfew days in a flurry of pumpkin-making madness. Leaford had entered into its countdown to the harvest festivities and every shop window was a riot of orange – the gift shop had orange candles, money banks, soft-toy clownfish and pumpkins, and the sweet-shop display jars were all stuffed with orange slices, gobstoppers and lollies. Even Gilly’s Gallery had obliged the yearly trend with a series of fox paintings. Emma and I had moved all the yarn in shades from coral to neon orange into the window, flanked by jars of buttons. Even the butcher had exchanged his plastic parsley with faux orange wedges.
The final deadline for the library’s harvest window display was looming and I had serious amounts of décor to make. Maeve’s salt-dough cornucopia was already sitting pretty in the window, along with most of the other contributions. I was way behind. The felt-leaf garlands were mostly just cutting and a tiny amount of sewing but the crochet pumpkins were another matter entirely. I’d committed to at least ten in multiple sizes and, although the pattern was fairly simple, the larger ones took some time to work up.
Sitting in front of oldCharmedepisodes, surrounded by tumbleweeds of hollow fibre filling, I worked for hours on my pumpkins. My fingernails were permanently speckled with fabric glue from doing the stems and velvet fibres from the chenille yarn. I was seeing pumpkins in my dreams – laughing at me. But I managed to get them all finished in time, though one was slightly wonky where I’d run out of stuffing. That was fine, he could go at the back. If anyone asked, I’d say he was a butternut squash.
Thursday afternoon we had early closing, so I went to drop everything off. It was a bright day with just a hint of autumnal chill. A light breeze caught the bat bunting and the orange lights strung down the high street. Battery-powered candles huddled in the hedgerows, their timers set to dusk.
